


Scenes from Welton Academy, 1959

by screamlet



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: 1950s, Boarding School, Boys Being Boys, Community: yuletidefuckery, Gen, Humor, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:50:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meeks and Pitts, well, they didn't need their lives changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scenes from Welton Academy, 1959

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andthen](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=andthen).



Welton Academy had movie night.

Dr. Lang was in charge of move night.

Dr. Lang shouldn't have been in charge of anything. Ever.

"How many times are we going to watch _Gigi_?" Pitts stage-whispered. "I checked: girls aren't impressed by showtunes. They laugh. _A lot_."

"Tell me about it," Meeks whispered. "Do you ever get the feeling we're being molded and shaped by those four pillars into a bunch of queers?"

"Guys," Todd whispered, so Meeks and Pitts shushed him.

Pitts hmm-ed to himself, obviously considering it carefully.

"My mom nags my dad about going to New York and seeing Broadway musicals," Pitts said eventually. "Maybe this is preparation for when we have wives who want to do this stuff."

"Dammit, Pitts," Meeks sighed. "Stop being smart."

"Mr. Meeks!" Dr. Lang cried out. "Perhaps you would like to join me at the front of the room for a sing along with Mr. Chevalier in the next song?"

"Oh God, I'm choking," Charlie laughed behind them. "Go Meeks, you thank heaven for those little --"

"Mr. Dalton! You may join him."

*

"Robert Hertzberg is obviously some kind of genius," Meeks began, "If he thinks that he can not only build a transistor radio in an hour, but teach _everyone_ to build transistor radios in an hour."

"He also has a hardware store down the street," Pitts replied. "I mean, I guess he does. Most people do. I don't think he's a 17-year-old guy at boarding school in the middle of no where, Delaware."

"Good point. So how are we getting parts?"

"We need a connection to the outside," Pitts said. "My brother's only twelve, he's not gonna --"

"And my sister's got her baby and she's kind of a ditz," Meeks said. "Hey."

Pitts looked up from the article on the transistor radio and raised his eyebrows.

"We're idiots," Meeks said. "Who do we know with an older brother on the outside, an older brother who's a total genius?"

Pitts' eyes widened: of course he knew who Meeks was talking about, but he knew what Meeks was _talking_ about, and that meant talking to _Todd_, who they weren't entirely sure _could_ speak without Neil nearby to puppet him. Not only that, but maybe he was a goody two shoes boot-licking kiss ass like Cameron, and radios were definitely an extra-curricular activity that could get them a reprimand.

"We have to try, at least," Meeks said.

They hesitated for a few more moments, and then laughed at each other.

"Jesus, it's _Todd_," Meeks said. "What's the worst that can happen?"

"Snitch on us. Burst into tears. Tell Neil. Not get us the parts."

Meeks considered it, and eventually they silently agreed the benefits were worth the risk and they should at least ask Todd.

Neil was off at one his clubs or something, so Todd was alone in the room, hunched over his desk, door slightly ajar but only enough for Meeks to peek inside. Pitts knocked and they came in.

Meeks was sure something had happened to Todd when he was a kid, something to make him this jumpy and nervous and terrified of just about everything, and explain why he always seemed to be shivering and shaking like a tiny dog -- but if something had, they'd probably never know.

"Hey. How are you?" Meeks asked.

Todd shrugged, looked at his work, and then looked back up at Meeks and Pitts, who were still in the doorway.

"Can we come in?" Pitts asked.

"Oh. Yeah. Uh. Yeah. Sure. Come on in. Do you -- you can sit, Neil's not here, he's -- not the annual, but I think -- newspaper? It might -- there's a --"

"Thanks," Meeks said as he sat in Neil's chair, Pitts on the trunk at the end of Neil's bed. "We have a favor to ask."

"Oh. Sure. Wh -- what is it?"

Pitts pulled the folded up transistor radio article from out of his sweater and handed it over to Todd, who took it but kept his eyes on Meeks. He quickly realized he should open the paper and read it, but Meeks figured he should explain anyway.

"--So we figured we'd ask if you could write to your brother or something and ask him to get us a few of these parts," Meeks finished. "We can take a few from the labs, and batteries are easy when we get a trip to town, but hardware stores. The teachers who come with us on trips to town, they'd know in a second."

"Um, sure," Todd said. "I -- I'll try, I guess -- can I -- can I send this to him?"

"You better not," Pitts said. "Just copy the list of things we need so we can keep the instructions --"

"Right, of course," Todd said. "I'll, uh, I'll do that now and bring it by. Maybe later?"

"Sure," Meeks said, knowing an invite to get the hell out when he heard one. "We'll be in our room all night -- two doors down from here, you know -- so come on by. Or in the common room. You know where to find us."

"You should come by anyway," Pitts said, also standing. "Just to shoot the shit. We don't bite."

"Pitts just stole some nice cigarettes from his uncle's pack the last time he was here," Meeks added. It suddenly seemed imperative that they get Todd to agree to come to their room, that he understand they could be friends.

"That -- that sounds great, thanks," Todd said. "I'll come by, then. I've probably been in this chair too long anyway."

"Great!" Meeks said with a little too much enthusiasm, which he quickly toned down. "We'll see you."

They strolled out, and Meeks and Pitts punched each other in the arm on a job well done.

*

"I hereby do declare every third Thursday of the month -- and any night I damn well please -- to be a Provocative Poetry Parade," Charlie announced.

"The parade's just for alliteration, isn't it?" Pitts asked. "We don't actually have to march up and down our _cave_ reading sexy poetry, do we?"

"Jeez, Pitts, how is marching sexy?" Charlie asked.

"Sappho, you pig," Neil replied. 

"_Sappho_?" Charlie asks. "You mean -- _Sappho_?" he asked in a deeper, more lecherous tone. "Is it true what they say about her?"

"I've only read a few but --" Neil laughed and flipped through his book, "Here it is, and let's all thank Ms. Mary Barnard's fine new adapta --"

"Shut up and read!" Charlie yelled. "Get to the _girls_!"

Neil cleared his throat and enunciated, in his perfect, overdramatic, but seriously _perfect_ voice: 

_Some say cavalry corps,  
some infantry, some, again,  
will maintain that the swift oars_

of our fleet are the finest  
sight on the dark earth; but I say  
that whatever one loves, is.

"That was not provocative," Meeks said.

"It might not even be poetry," Knox added.

"But Neil's voice is dreamy, guys," Charlie said. "Come on Neil, read us another -- though I have to agree, this time it better be sexier."

"Wait," Pitts said. He turned to Todd and said, "What were you saying, Todd?"

"I -- I wasn't --"

"You were, Todd," Neil said. "What was it?"

Meeks had to agree with Charlie: something about Neil's voice could get a girl pregnant if she listened too long. Maybe all the extra-curriculars were his cover for going into town and doing just that every night. Maybe this whole town was filled with Neil Perry, Jr.'s, and they'd never know. Neil's voice was extra _everything_ when he was talking to Todd: extra gentle, extra encouraging, extra persuasive, and Meeks listened like his life depended on it.

"Do you guys read the Bible?" Todd asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Todd, are you a conscientious objector?" Charlie asked like the jackass he was.

"No, I'm -- I'm saying there's a poem there called the Song of Solomon and -- it's poetry and it's kind of, well."

"Gentlemen!" Neil cried out. "To our Bibles!"

Of course, they never followed up, but at least Todd spoke at a meeting and that was something.

*

Mr. Keating's classes were fun, but that fun came at a price.

Meeks had noticed that every class ended with Mr. Keating staring them all down, looking into their souls, trying his damnedest to see whether they had changed that day -- whether his lesson about conformity, beauty, love, friendship, being yourself, whatever had sunk in and made them think.

Neil tried to sit close and give Mr. Keating his biggest, most impressionable doe eyes, taking every word and writing them on his heart and letting them all change his life. That was Neil all over, but Mr. Keating wasn't satisfied -- there were about 20 other boys in the class, and they had souls that needed saving, too.

Meeks and Pitts, well, they didn't need their lives changed. Actually, very few of the boys at Welton needed their lives changed by Mr. Keating: maybe it really was just Neil, Charile, and Knox who needed Mr. Keating and poetry and inspirational quotes from coasters to reach out and grab what they thought they deserved. 

And Todd. Todd needed to open his mouth once in a while and show he was alive. Todd needed to be held down and words squeezed out of him a little more often; it was one thing to keep one's head down and just _get by_, but Todd was eerie in his silence and it worried the rest of them.

Back to the matter of Mr. Keating. Meeks and Pitts liked Mr. Keating and had seen a few too many young teachers crushed by their teenage parentally imposed utilitarianism and apathy, so they threw him a bone once in a while.

"Mr. Keating, you -- I wrote a poem -- _on my own_," Pitts whispered one day to him as the class was emptying. "I submitted it anonymously to the school paper -- I hope they take it. Don't tell anyone."

Mr. Keating _glowed_ with pride and didn't make any jokes about Pitts' last name for a week. Pitts, of course, wrote nothing, and when no poem appeared in the paper, well, actually, that was problematic.

"Did you tell Neil?" Mr. Keating asked one day, _weeks_ after the white lie. "About your submission? He's the editor -- surely he --"

"I could," Pitts considered, then sighed. "Neil'd never do it. You know Neil."

They did know Neil and his blinding honesty and uprightness, and Mr. Keating didn't bring it up again.

Meeks had a little more trouble, truth be told, as his life didn't lend itself particularly well to carping the diem and all that other shit from Horace.

"What are your hobbies, Mr. Meeks?" Mr. Keating asked him one day. They were outside in mid October, almost Columbus Day, and Meeks had been caught off guard while studying for a chemistry test during his free period. "Tell me your dreams, your _passions_ -- what makes you _burn_?"

And Meeks realized, damn Mr. Keating, that he had never thought of it before. What _did_ make him burn? What _did_ he live and die for, like Neil and every inch of freedom he won from his father, Charlie and his quest to be Marlon Brando or a criminal, Knox and a girl's warm body and scented hair?

"Honestly, Mr. Keating," Meeks said, "Not much. Girls when I see them, some songs when I hear them, but I just really want to get to college, you know? And be 18 and out of my parents' hair."

"You keep putting off life, Mr. Meeks, and you might one day find --" Mr. Keating's mouth quirked slightly and he laughed to himself. "There's a quote from Thoreau about it. _And not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived_."

"I'm 17, Mr. Keating," Meeks said. "_There will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate_."

Mr. Keating looked impressed and gave Meeks a real grin that was usually reserved for Neil and for Todd's talking occasions. "_Time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions_!"

"_Before the taking of a toast and tea._"

Meeks won the chance to study for his chemistry test and, strangely enough, couldn't get the grin off his face for a while after Mr. Keating had left.

*

"I love Todd's brother," Meeks said as he and Pitts tweaked their radio. "Like, he spent _money_ on these pieces. This is amazing. This radio might actually work."

"Of course it will," Pitts said. "It isn't that hard, Meeks, we're just at a disadvantage because we're living in a police state which has us building contraband radios on a castle turret after curfew _in November_."

"High school sucks," Meeks agreed.

"Young man, do avoid that slang. Did you ever hear Horace using such language!"

"And _worse_," Meeks replied. "Have _you_ read Catullus 16, Mr. F -- oh, shh, shut up."

"What?" Pitts whispered.

They looked over and two turrets over, Neil and Todd were huddled together with a shiny, flat, plastic… thing between them. 

"Remember when Neil was a freshman?" Pitts asked. "We were both tiny and we had barely gone through puberty; then suddenly it's sophomore year, and me and him were giants. And there was that dance with St. Lucia's --"

"Yeah, you two were _studs_," Meeks said. "Okay, mostly Neil. And then Charlie caught up."

"Charlie killed my sex life," Pitts sighed. "But Marion wrote me a letter."

"What's she up to?"

"She's seeing someone," Pitts replied. "But she doesn't like him as much as me. Says she'll dump him after Homecoming but she's gotta go with someone. Her dad bought her a new dress."

"So what you do is get her to send you some copies of the pictures and you make a collage out of that guy."

"Sure," Pitts said, but Meeks could tell he was watching Neil and Todd, too. 

Neil and Todd weren't doing much, just standing close and huddled (cigaretteless, too, which was weird) and talking, and examining the shiny plastic thing, laughing sometimes.

"I can't believe Mr. Perry wants Neil to be a doctor," Meeks said after a short silence. "Neil should be president. No, not the real president, but like a movie president. He should be a lawyer fighting for framed criminals. He should be anything but a doctor. Doctors spend years up to their elbows in guts and -- seriously, can you imagine Neil like that?"

"Mr. Keating probably wants Neil to be poet laureate, if we even have those anymore," Pitts replied. "I can see him doing that."

"You can see him making a living in a prestigious job that might only exist in 19th century England? I'm looking that up tomorrow -- whether we still do poet laureates."

"If we do still have them, they don't seem to do much, do they?"

Todd flung the plastic thing -- "A desk set!" Meeks laughed to himself -- off the turret and he and Neil laughed out at the night. Meeks and Pitts turned back to their radio and debated what song God would allow them to hear first once the radio worked.

*

"I have a poem," Meeks announced. "It's 'The Naming of Parts' by Henry Reed."

"Is it Provocative?" Charlie asked.

"I hope they accept it as Poetry," Neil added.

"Parade!" Knox said. "I saw Chris today -- practicing and -- parades, guys. Parades."

Neil clapped Knox on the shoulder in a _yeah, man, we support your true love_ kind of way, which was great because then the rest of them could avoid talking about how Knox's crush made them want to vomit.

Meeks puffed on his pipe dramatically and read from the book he had checked out from the library, doing a fairly good job if he said so himself.

_And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this  
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it  
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this  
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards  
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:  
They call it easing the Spring._

Meeks paused between the penultimate and final stanzas for a reaction because that was really the filthiest part, but he was greet with blank expressions.

"Guys?" he asked.

"You're reading us an Army training manual?" Charlie asked.

"…What?" Meeks asked.

"I don't get it," Knox said, looking to Neil or Pitts or anyone for clarification.

"_Gentlemen_," Meeks cried out. "Come on! _This you can see is the bolt_," he said heavily. "_The purpose of this is to **open the breech**. We can **slide it rapidly** backwards and forwards, and rapidly **backwards and forwards** the early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers_."

They all looked at him blankly, except for Pitts.

"Thrusting," Pitts finally said. "Like when you're having sex. And that earlier bit about the safety-catch --"

"You guys are so full of shit," Charlie scoffed.

Neil was considering it carefully while Knox continued to look terrified because were girls' parts soft or were they guns?

Todd's spine had coiled into itself so no one could see his face. Cameron was there, too, but Cameron was an idiot and would accept whatever interpretation the majority came up with.

"I think -- they could be right," Neil said slowly.

"Thank you, Neil, for having _touched_ a woman once in your life," Meeks said. 

"Hey there, hey --" Charlie said. "I've _touched_ women --"

"Just not where it counts, apparently," Meeks retorted.

"Oh, and you have?"

"Would you even _know_ a --"

"Who wants a cigarette or ten?" Neil asked, passing around a pack someone somewhere had bought him for his birthday.

"Damned obscure poetry -- this is not that Provocative Poetry Parading is about, Meeks!" Charlie said. "This is about fun and sex and not carburetors or revolvers or shit!"

Meeks leaned back against the wall of the cave with his book of poetry and puffed on his cigarette sulkily, Charlie doing the same across the way.

"How about some Whitman? Or Frost?" Neil asked.

"NO," they all replied.

"Horace?"

Pages were crumpled and thrown at Neil, who laughed at them all the same.


End file.
